Browser Game Roundup: Best of January 2010

A new year, a new set of browser games. 2009 was a pretty stunning year for the medium and I have high hopes for 2010. Now that art games are a significant part of the industry, a lot more creativity and style have started popping up in Internet-based titles. This has made the field considerably more crowded, but hopefully this competition will encourage innovation. It's still early in the year, so we'll have to wait to see if 2010 will be as strong a year for the browser game.

All told, January was something of a light month for browser games. I suppose the work-averse holiday season had something to do with that. Still, a few truly interesting offerings hit the usual channels. The thin stack of exemplary games means that several different genres get represented this month. There's a unique puzzle game, a simple and balanced shooter and a clever strategy title on the slab. Let's dive right in.

Kongregate user pureth has been plinking away at Flash game design for a while now, but none of his creations were as polished or engaging as his latest title, Snipedown. It's a bare-bones Defend-The-House shooter that manages to do what few in this popular genre can. It's balanced in both difficulty and player attention. Where most defense games are terribly lopsided, leading to an inevitable point at which it becomes pointlessly difficult or zero-click easy, Snipedown maintains a degree of difficulty that is more or less parallel with the player's equipment and skill. Careful spending and a strategic understanding of what enemies need immediate attention versus which ones can be left to the automated turrets is the key to beating Snipedown, but good aim doesn't hurt.

Whether going by TJ Carlos or the handle Cave of Wonders, January's top strategy browser game Civilizations Wars lends a smooth artistic style to the fast-paced Real-Time Swarm genre. Best demonstrated in the Phage Wars series, this variety of game takes the technical limitations of the browser medium and uses them to create a frantic but still strategic game of domination. Civilizations Wars goes one step beyond that, focusing not just on unit accumulation but on resource management as well. The end result is a fun, challenging time-waster with a real sense of humor.

On the art game front, the student perception experiment Continuity is one of the most inventive puzzle titles to ever hit the Internet. Created by Elias Holmlid, Dmitri Kurteanu, Guy Lima Jr., and Stefan Mikaelsson of Gothenberg University in Sweden, Continuity puts a mind-bending spin on the classic "get key, go to door" format that is practically as old as gaming itself. Levels consist of discreet screens that can be shuffled to give the stick figure protagonist a variety of different pathways depending on how the screens are combined. It starts off simple and low-risk, but as the number of screens multiplies the puzzles get more brutal. Complete with an original soundtrack which is available for free on itunes, Continuity is a clear standout in January's browser titles.